The Byzantine and Christian Museum, founded in 1914, holds one of the most important collections of Byzantine and post-Byzantine religious art in the world, with approximately 25,000 items dating from the fourth to the twentieth century. Housed in a beautiful villa in the Kolonaki area, the museum presents icons, mosaics, sculptures, frescoes, embroidery, and ecclesiastical metalwork that trace the artistic and spiritual heritage of the Byzantine Empire and the Greek Orthodox tradition. For visitors interested in the transition from the ancient classical world to the medieval Christian one, no collection in Athens tells that story more completely.
Book Athens Airport Transfers to Museums: A Complete Guide to the City's Great Collections
Book Athens Airport Transfers to Museums
Athens is home to some of the most important museum collections anywhere in the world, spanning more than seven thousand years of human civilization from Neolithic figurines to modern Greek painting. The city’s museums hold treasures that define our understanding of the ancient world, from Mycenaean gold and the mysterious Antikythera mechanism to the sculptures of the Parthenon and the minimalist marble figures of the Cyclades.
A well-organized athens transfer gets you from the airport to these extraordinary collections efficiently, comfortably, and on your own schedule.
Acropolis Museum
The Acropolis Museum is one of the great archaeological museums of the world, purpose-built to display the original sculptures and artifacts from the Acropolis in a setting that faces the sacred rock itself. Designed by the architect Bernard Tschumi and opened in 2009, the glass-and-concrete building sits about 300 meters downhill from the Acropolis, oriented at the exact angle of the Parthenon above. More than 4,250 objects are exhibited across four floors, including the five original Caryatids that remain in Greece, the surviving Parthenon Marbles in the famous top-floor Parthenon Gallery, and archaic korai and kouroi statues. Glass floors throughout the building reveal an excavated fifth-century Athenian neighborhood beneath your feet, a museum experience unlike any other in the world.
National Archaeological Museum
The National Archaeological Museum is the largest museum in Greece and holds one of the world’s greatest collections of ancient art, with more than 11,000 exhibits spanning over 7,000 years of history. Housed in a majestic neoclassical building north of the city center, it is organized into five major collections covering prehistoric, sculpture, metalwork, pottery, and Egyptian antiquities. The highlights are among the most famous objects in the world, including the golden Mask of Agamemnon from the royal graves at Mycenae, the Antikythera mechanism widely considered the world’s first analogue computer, and the bronze statues recovered from ancient shipwrecks. It is a museum so vast that it genuinely rewards multiple visits, though its treasures can be appreciated in a focused half-day tour.
Benaki Museum
The Benaki Museum is one of the most comprehensive collections of Greek culture across the ages, founded by Antonis Benakis and donated to the Greek state in 1931. Housed in an elegant neoclassical mansion opposite the National Garden, the main building presents more than 40,000 objects in a chronological journey through Greek civilization, from Neolithic tools and Cycladic figurines through Mycenaean gold, Byzantine icons, and post-Byzantine ecclesiastical art, all the way to the heirlooms of the modern Greek state and the War of Independence. The museum is now a network of several sites across Athens, but the main mansion branch remains the essential starting point for understanding the sweep of Greek history and material culture.
Museum of Cycladic Art
Byzantine and Christian Museum
Numismatic Museum
The Numismatic Museum is one of the most atmospheric museums in Athens, not only for its extraordinary collection of coins, medals, and monetary history but for the building that houses it.
The museum occupies the Iliou Melathron, the grand neoclassical mansion built for Heinrich Schliemann, the archaeologist who excavated Troy and Mycenae. The mansion itself is a work of art, with elaborate mosaic floors, painted ceilings, and richly decorated interiors designed by Ernst Ziller. The collection traces the history of money from ancient Greek city-state coinage through the Roman, Byzantine, and modern periods, all displayed within one of the most beautiful private residences ever built in the Greek capital.
National Gallery (Ethniki Pinakothiki)
The National Gallery, known in Greek as the Ethniki Pinakothiki, is the principal collection of Greek fine art, reopened in 2021 after a major expansion and renovation. The gallery presents the development of modern Greek painting and sculpture from the post-Byzantine period through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with works by the great Greek masters alongside a selection of important European art including pieces attributed to El Greco, the Cretan-born painter who became one of the giants of the Spanish Renaissance. The expanded and modernized building has transformed the gallery into one of the finest spaces for art in the city.
Museum of Greek Popular Instruments
The Museum of Greek Popular Instruments is a charming and specialized collection dedicated to the musical traditions of Greece, housed in a restored mansion in the heart of Plaka.
The museum presents a rich collection of traditional Greek musical instruments across several categories, from stringed and wind instruments to percussion, many of them accompanied by recordings that allow visitors to hear the sounds each instrument produces. For anyone interested in the living folk traditions of Greece and the music that has accompanied Greek life for centuries, it offers a warm and intimate experience quite different from the grand archaeological collections elsewhere in the city.
Herakleidon Museum
The Herakleidon Museum is a private museum in the pedestrianized Thissio neighborhood dedicated to the intersection of art, mathematics, and science. The museum has hosted exhibitions on figures such as M.C. Escher and has explored themes connecting visual art with scientific principles, geometry, and perception. Housed in a restored neoclassical building with a peaceful atmosphere, it offers a more contemplative and intellectually focused experience, appealing especially to visitors drawn to the meeting point of the artistic and the scientific mind.
War Museum
The Athens War Museum is the national military museum of Greece, presenting the country’s military history from antiquity to the modern era. The collection spans ancient Greek warfare, including weapons and armor from the classical and Hellenistic periods, through the Byzantine military tradition, the War of Independence, and the conflicts of the twentieth century. The museum also displays an outdoor collection of aircraft and artillery. For visitors interested in the martial history that runs alongside the artistic and philosophical achievements of Greece, the War Museum provides a comprehensive and well-organized account.
Visiting the Museums of Athens with Book Athens Transfers
The great museums of Athens are spread across the city, from the Acropolis Museum at the foot of the sacred rock to the National Archaeological Museum north of the center and the cluster of fine collections around Kolonaki.
The challenge for many visitors is getting from Athens International Airport to these dispersed locations efficiently, particularly when planning a day that takes in several collections.
A pre-booked private athens transfer with Book Athens Transfers takes all of that logistics off your hands from the moment you land. Whether you are heading directly to a hotel near the Acropolis Museum, making a focused visit to the National Archaeological Museum, or planning a cultural day across several collections, Book Athens Transfers provides professional, punctual, and door-to-door service from the airport to wherever you need to be. Premium transfers are available for guests who want a more refined experience, and Athens Airport Minivans are ideal for groups and families visiting the museums together.